Former Liverpool centre back and current Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher disputes Arsenal's ability to mount a serious challenge in the Premier League or in the domestic cups this season as a: the loss of Olivier Giroud and b: the unlikelihood of Arsene Wenger being able to adequately cover the injury, will affect the club's contender status.

The Frenchman fractured his ankle last weekend and will not be available for selection for the rest of the calender year. While Wenger is linked with a number of reinforcements - such as Edinson Cavani, Radamel Falcao and even Loic Remy - he only has three days to complete a deal, and elite-level talents are hard to acquire this late in the transfer window.

"I think they needed a new striker when Giroud was fit so they definitely need a new one now!" Said Carragher. "But do I think they will get one? Probably not.

"It is difficult to get a top-drawer frontman with less than a week to go before the deadline because there aren’t that many available, which is why I think Liverpool did so well to snap up [Mario] Balotelli for a potential snip at £16million.

"Arsenal will be looking, if at all, at the best Europe has to offer and I don’t think they will get someone like that."

In order to get the true benefit out of all of Arsenal's technically-exquisite footballers in the central zones, a robust 'old school number nine' type of centre forward akin to Diego Costa would return a plethora of goals, argues Carragher.

"You could say that with Giroud out and Alexis Sanchez around and Theo Walcott to come back in, they might want to sign a more physical striker but I think they need one who scores goals.

"Being honest, they don’t have anyone who can compete with the likes of Diego Costa at Chelsea, [Daniel] Sturridge at Liverpool or Manchester City’s choice of strikers when it comes to scoring goals regularly, even when Giroud is fit.

"For that reason – and because I don’t think the squad is as strong as it could be – I wonder whether Arsenal can get to where they want to go this year, which is winning trophies."